Family Values
by goodbye blue monday
Summary: This is the first fan fic I ever wrote. It's been up here for years, but I thought I'd tidy it up and break it down a bit.


Okay, this is the first piece of fanfic I ever wrote. I'm having a   
major dry period, so thought I'd tidy this up a bit. Anyway, please   
review.   
  
More chapters to follow.  
  
Diclaimer:Don't own 'em. Well, most of them.   
  
  
  
  
Lucia looked at the mess in front of her, and felt a scream rising up   
in her throat. It was three am, she was in the middle of nowhere, and   
any second now she was going to start screaming, and once it started,   
it would never end. Instead, she turned away from the scene that   
confronted her and threw up.   
  
Leaving physical evidence all over a crime scene  
  
The cool, collected voice that always seemed to take over in these   
situations informed her. She didn't care. This was her brother. Her   
twin, if she was being specific. Or what was left of him. She didn't   
think she had ever seen such a mess before. And she had seen dead   
bodies. Her father had made these messes, and done his best to keep   
them from her precious little eyes, but Lucia had seen them. She knew.  
And now, it was Danny. Not some faceless, meaningless little nobody   
who had screwed her father over. Danny had done something; her father   
had made him pay, and now she was sitting between his corpse and a   
pile of her own vomit wondering what to do.   
  
There's always the police.  
  
The voice told her. And it was her mother. Lucia had no doubt about   
that, her mother who was ten years in her grave was talking to her.  
  
"Nu-uh." Lucia whispered back to the voice, embarrassed to be   
talking to herself, and relieved to have that small part of her mother   
at the same time. "Daddy would kill me. Look what he did to…" She   
choked back a sob, refusing to let the tears come, because they would   
never end once they began.  
  
You're brother wasn't fast enough. If you go now...  
  
Lucia whimpered. She didn't want to go to the police. Didn't want to   
rip her family apart any more than she had to. But what other option   
did she have? After her mother died, there was only Danny, Greg and   
her father. And the less said about Greg the better. She slowly, and   
shakily, got to her feet.  
  
"Don't worry Dan, okay? Don't you worry about nothing."   
She told her brother, who continued to stare at the ceiling, his dead   
eyes not really focusing on anything.   
  
Lucia turned and walked away.  
  
Ray Kowalski had problems. Although, he would reluctantly admit that   
Lucia's were slightly more serious than his own, at this exact moment   
in time, it was a close run thing. As if an entire week of the night   
shift before him wasn't enough for any man to have to endure, he had   
managed to staple himself to the desk. And it hurt like hell.   
  
"Connie! Connie, Jesus Christ would you move your ass!" He screamed,   
his voice wavering slightly. He wondered why they even bothered to   
hire civilian aides if the bastards went for coffee whenever a   
detective was in genuine need of aid.   
The situation wasn't entirely his fault. He had no way of knowing the   
staples in the staple gun were large enough to pass through his flesh   
and adhere his hand to the table between the thumb and index finger.   
And, okay, so he probably shouldn't have been playing John Wayne with   
the staple gun in the first place, but it was three thirty in the   
morning, there had been a lot of coffee and it seemed a lot safer   
than doing it with a loaded weapon. Especially when he had to account   
for each bullet fired.   
  
He tried vaguely to remember the early symptoms of tetanus. Had he had  
a booster in the last ten years? Probably, but you never really know.   
There was that article he read about the kid in Minnesota who had his   
tetanus shot, went out two weeks later, and...  
  
He had to get out of here. But how? He pulled at the hand, sending a   
shockwave of pain up his arm, and digging an even deeper groove into   
his arm. That wasn't going to work. There was probably something   
around here he could use to pry it out with. He scanned his desk, and   
spotted the telephone.  
  
"Damn!" He exclaimed, picking up the receiver with his free hand and   
lodging it between his ear and his shoulder. He started to dial the   
emergency room, then stopped, pushing down the button to again reveal   
the dial tone. If he called emergency services, he was going to look   
pretty damn stupid getting them out here to remove a staple from a   
desk. He considered it for a second, then sighed with obvious defeat.   
He could think of only one person he could call who wouldn't make fun   
of him for the rest of his natural life. He sighed and started   
dialling Fraser's number.  
  
As Lucia entered the squad room, she wondered about the screaming   
that seemed to be coming from every where around her. 'Cop Shops',   
as squad rooms were known in her family, were supposed to be places of  
good, where justice prevailed, and the evil was defeated and all that   
crap. This one sounded more like a torture chamber. Especially given   
the content of the jumbled words.  
  
"Jesus Christ, don't do that, please, please Benny, stop it." Didn't   
seem to suggest the negative stance cops were supposed to take on   
police brutality, but then again, Benny was a first name which   
suggested whoever was being tortured was on reasonably intimate terms   
with this Benny character. She considered not going in, or maybe going   
to another squad house, but decided against this. For one thing,   
she felt lucky to have made it to this one alive, if they knew she   
knew about Danny by now, and her father paid a lot of people very well   
so he could know these things before they happened, her dad would have   
her killed. Also, this person sounded like they were in a lot of pain.   
Images of her brother rose up, what they must have put him through   
and she couldn't just walk away. So instead of running she walked in.   
  
At first, she could see nothing in the small, grey room that could   
merit that kind of screaming. There were two men, standing at a desk,   
one tall and muscular with dark hair and the other not quite so tall,   
skinny and in possession of what Lucia could only call Weird Hair.   
They seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of interest in the   
skinny ones hand.  
  
"Ray, if you would just hold still-"  
  
"I'm trying! God."  
  
"I don't understand how you managed to do this in the first place.   
What were you trying to do?"  
  
"Lets not get into that right at this moment in time, huh, Fraser.   
The situation isn't gonna change no matter how much we discuss it."  
  
"Excuse me?" Lucia asked as softly as she could, trying not to scare   
them. They both jumped the skinny one letting out a cry as he did so,   
then gawked at her. Lucia was used to being gawked at, but it made her   
uncomfortable all the same. She was a pretty girl. She was also   
wearing an extremely small dress. She had been at a party when her   
brother called, and was suddenly very aware of the fact that she   
hadn't changed.   
  
Fraser was the first to stop gawking and actually say something.  
  
"How can we assist you ma'am?" He asked.  
  
"What's wrong with your friend?" She asked back.  
  
"Well, Ma'am-"  
  
"You tell her Fraser and you are a dead man." Ray informed his friend,  
and unofficial partner in his police work, without looking away from   
the girl.  
  
"He stapled his hand to the desk." Fraser finished.  
  
Lucia started laughing. Once she started, she found that she couldn't   
stop. She didn't want to hurt this guys feelings, or make him feel any  
stupider than he must inevitably feel, but she couldn't stop all the   
same. Her muscles ached from it, and her breaths were coming in in   
large, ragged gasps.   
  
"It ain't funny!" Ray protested, causing her to laugh even harder.   
Finally, Fraser brought her a glass of water, and that seemed to   
settle her for a while.  
  
"Better, thanks." She told him, then started rooting around in her bag.  
  
"What's she doing?" Ray whispered to Fraser as she rummaged around in   
an impossibly tiny bag, pulling things out and scattering them all   
over Connie's desk.   
  
"Here we go." She muttered to herself, then came over and began to   
inspect his hand. "That looks really nasty" She said, prodding at it,   
then looking up at him. He shifted uncomfortably. She was a   
good-looking girl, and he had to wonder if it was possible for her to   
be wearing fewer clothes.   
  
"That your medical opinion?" He asked her, a little more sharply than   
he intended.  
  
"Do you want me to get you out of this or not, wiseass." She asked.  
  
"I don't know." He said.  
  
"Just look over at your buddy there, and you'll be fine." She told him.  
  
"I don't know if I should be turning my back on some crazy lady who   
wanders in here at three thirty in the morning"  
  
"Yeah, cuz you're in a hell of a position to be picking your knight   
in shining armour."   
  
"You don't look much like a knight."   
  
"Shut up."  
  
"Little less clothing."  
  
"Okay, fine, I'm leaving." She began to walk away.  
  
"No! Okay, you can help."   
  
"I can? That's awfully big of you." She looked down at his hand.   
"Okay, look over at your buddy."   
  
Anxiously, Ray looked over at Fraser, grimacing as he waited for the   
pain to explode. There was a faint twinge.  
  
"There." The weird girl announced.   
  
"What?" He cried.  
  
She was holding a pair of tweezers with a very self-important look on   
her face. They were gripping an impossibly large looking staple, which  
in Ray's opinion, was covered in gore.  
  
A second later he realised he had been freed. Raising his hand, he   
looked at the small symmetrical holes on one side and the long,   
straight cut on the other. It bleed a little, but not too much, and   
ached dully.  
  
"Now, can I talk to a detective or what?" Lucia asked, dropping the   
gore-covered piece of steel into Ray's open palm. 


End file.
